


Singing For Devils

by jungle_ride



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1940s, F/F, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 06:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12293388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungle_ride/pseuds/jungle_ride
Summary: The smell of liquor mixed with the delicate scents of women’s light flowery perfume and the heavy robust woody scents of the men’s cologne is strong as she slides her way into the club. It floods her senses, overpoweringly, filling her mouth with a phantom taste of gasoline. This place is a grenade of a cocktail and her body is reminding her of the price she will pay if set alight.





	Singing For Devils

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



The smell of liquor mixed with the delicate scents of women’s light flowery perfume and the heavy robust woody scents of the men’s cologne is strong as she slides her way into the club. It floods her senses, overpoweringly strong, filling her mouth with a phantom taste of gasoline. This place is a grenade of a cocktail and her body is reminding her of the price she will pay if set alight.

Already the hairs on the back of her neck are standing on end, her muscles tensing and tingling with vibrations as her flight and fight survival responses kick in. There is pain, sharp and hot pulsating in her hip on the right side, and in left shoulder. She wonders if the sweet metallic pungency she fears is wafting from her is detectable. She prays it isn’t.

The lighting in the club is dim, lamps toned down causing a hazy glow to cover the otherwise darkened room. Smoke from cigarettes and cigars; fill the air, creating a fog that floats above the hub of people like a dusty cloud in a midnight sky. The club itself, situated underground (which is coldly ironic in her opinion, considering it’s clientele), is small in comparison to the large spaces those of its kind had held in earlier years; before the threat of bombs had forced them to retreat, to the unused spaces below.

Still despite its location, it is a bustle with people. The idle chit chatter and clinking glasses is a musical undertone to the band playing in full swing on the makeshift stage. Despite the location, the glamour has not been lost. Women are dressed to the nines, most in tight forming dresses, their lips painted in dazzling reds or blushing pinks. The men, most of them dressed in uniforms, some more offensive to her than others, are an equal match to their female counterparts. The crisp lines of their shirts and jackets are pristine. The buttons on them gleaming in the light, appearing to her like bullets lined up waiting for their shot. It’s a constant reminder to her, that there are vipers and snakes to be found in this rambunctious crowd and not all of them wear the banner of blood around their arms. There is danger here for her. For Sybille; the resistance fighter of Berlin.

Logic is screaming at Sybille to get out while she can. She knows she is walking on the edge of the knife. She shouldn’t be here, not in this state, but Sybille has never missed a Rosa Kühn performance and to do so now, seems like an act of betrayal. After all Rosa is expecting her, will be scanning the crowd for her face and had she not found it Rosa would have come looking for her. Someone would have noticed that, their beady eyes trained to see the slightest flicker. The suspicion alone would have been enough to tie Rosa’s fate to to a Genickschuss end.

Sybille doesn’t flinch as she walks to gain a better view of the stage. She gives no indication she is distressed in anyway. If she had she she might as well  of signed her own execution papers. Ignoring the pain she presses herself against the wall and uses it for support as she makes her way around to the darkest corner, she can find. Sybille has learnt the art of getting lost in a crowd, it’s easy in a place like this, but she also knows it is equally as easy to stand out. Her life has been a navigation of this juxtaposition for longer than she cares to remember.

Her head is whirling, mind clouded with a haze of thoughts, as a faint static of white noise buzzes faintly in her ears. She has not had time to recover from the ordeal of the  nights earlier events; to process the loss. Three were dead; Helga, Klaus and Vera all fallen. Sybille herself had barely escaped the Grunewald forest with her life and half of her is still expecting the Gestapo to come storming in, though she knows it was dark enough that no one saw her face. Not that she was afraid of death. She knew that the possibility of it was higher than not when she signed up to ‘the underground’.

The only thing she truly fears is giving away names under torture and implementing Rosa, she fears that more than anything. It was why she always carried a cyanide pill concealed in the necklace Rosa had given her. The most, if not only, femme thing about her. Sybille was a muscular woman with broad shoulders with a strong set jaw. Her features leant them so much to the opposite sex, she has often been mistaken for a man, which is her lie of work was much more of an advantage than it has ever been before in her lifetime.

Sybille thoughts are interrupted by the change in the atmosphere, the sudden hush of the crowd. Her attention drawn back to the stage and the single spot light that was shining there, illuminating the figure of a woman, her defined narrow waist accentuated by the curves of her hips and full bust. She is dressed in a silk number, which hugs her body like a second skin. Her long blonde hair is swept over to one side. It cascades down her left shoulder in gentle waves, held back on the right by a single red rose. Blue eyes, dazzling and alluring as ever, twinkle in the pure white light. The two captivating pools in which many have lost themselves in; but only Sybille has ever been welcome, are framed by perfectly shaped arched eyebrows. Her lips, tainted a bright red are spread in a soft smile. She is stunning. The intake of breath from the crowd is audible, all of them in awe of the specular in front of them. Sybille’s own heart skips a beat as she gazes upon Rosa, her worries lying forgotten somewhere in the back of her mind.

Rosa looks out into the crowd, scanning faces in the sea of people before her just like Sybille knew she would. Sybille whose survival often depended on her fading into the background, knows that even now in this darkened hidden corner, Rosa will find her. Sure enough her eyes pass over the area in which she is standing and the corners of her lips twitch a little, a secret acknowledgement between them. She takes an intake of breath before lifting her left shoulder and glancing over it, winking to the band. Knowing there cue, they lift there instruments and the music kicks in.

\-----

Rosa’s performance was a huge success met with a rapturous applause and a high demand for more. Despite the conflicts Sybille will always have with the crowd Rosa is entertaining she is proud of her. She deserved to have her talent recognised, though Sybille often wonders if recognition from such people meant anything at all.

Many of their fights were about this very topic. Sybille hated that Rosa could perform for these monsters. That she’d taken jobs singing in their private homes. It was all about money, Rosa told her. The pay at the club was enough to keep them alive. The money from events like those was enough to supply the resistance with arms. _“I sing for those devils so you can kill them.”_ It had taken her a while but Sybille now realises that although it takes guts to rebel against the Führer’s regime, taking up arms and fighting with the resistance; it was not the only way to fight back. It took equals amounts of bravery to stand in the face of your enemies and smile. Perhaps it took more.

Sybille slips backstage after the performance, the doorman, Hans, station outside her dressing room lets her through without a fuss. He is after all a resistance member himself. Rosa had asked him to take the job, it not only gave him a good position for gaining intel, as many Officers and such liked to visit the girls backstage, but it also provided protection for Rosa.

Rosa is sitting in front of the mirror, touching up her makeup, when Sybille enters the room. Her smile is wide and bright when she sees her, stretching across her face like a sunbeam.

“I would kiss you, but I’d get lipstick all over you and I know how you hate the stuff.” Rosa laughs, her voice even now sounds like a song. As if melody is written into her DNA. Sybille tries hard not to flinch as Rosa, envelopes her in a fierce embrace, arms wrapping around her muscular frame with great enthusiasm. She tires and fails. Rosa, eternally in tuned to her lover, pulls back concern etched into her features.

“You’re hurt.” she presents it as a fact, not a question, eyes scanning Sybille’s body as if she could see through the clothes to the wounds beneath.

“I’m fine.” Sybille lies, with a smile. Her head has been growing steadily cloudy; black spots have begun appearing in the corners of her eyes, like busting stars. She should sit down. She needs to rest, but to do so would mean conceding to the pain. Sybille has never been good at such things.

“You were great out there tonight.” Sybille says in an attempt at distracting Rosa but her voice, wavers betraying her. She kisses her cheek instead, her hands, rough and callused; entangling themselves with Rosa’s soft and slender ones. By the frowning concern etched into every feature of Rosa’s face Sybille knows her distraction technique is not working.

“Tell me what happened." Rosa starts to demanded. Sybille sways on the spot, her body betraying her will and succumbing to the wounds. Rosa reaches out and grasps her tightly, causing a sharp stab of pain in her shoulder and a new flourish of black stars in her vision.

“Achtung, Feind hört mit.” Sybille mutters with a wry expression as Rosa calls for Hans.

\----

“I can’t believe you were shot and that you came to the club instead of dealing with this.” Rosa gestures to Sybille’s bloodied, battered and bruised body. The outrage in her voice could have been heard from miles away, though her voice is only just above a whisper. She is boiling water in a pan, sterilizing a needle dressed in a silk nightdress. Sybille smiles, amused that  even now in this domesticate bubble of theirs; the glamour of the nightclub singer lingers in her aura. Sybille is sitting on the kitchen chair in her underwear, plain cotton, nothing fancy, exposing the full state of trauma her body has suffered.

Rosa and Hans had gotten her home without much of a fuss. They’d shoved a champagne bottle in her hand and had pretended she’d had too much to drink. Sybille doesn’t remember much of the journey home, but considering how the world around her had been swimming and she couldn’t walk straight at the time, she figured it wouldn’t have been hard to believe her to be inebriated.

“It’s all superficial.” Sybille shrugs, downplaying the drama of the night as much as possible. Rosa is worried enough and she herself is still reeling for the near miss.

“Have you seen the state of yourself?” Rosa scoffs eyebrows knotted in worry. Sybille would have thought she’d grown used to seeing her like this. After all life in the resistance was not all sunshine and rainbows. She was a solider and soldiers bleed.

“You should have gone to the base.” Rosa says for the umpteenth time as she sits down on the chair bringing over the now sterilised needle and thread.

Sybille’s left shoulder, which had dislocated when she ran straight into a tree, has a large red and purple bruise that goes from the top of her shoulder down her arm and round onto her upper chest in a large sporadic circular shape. Sybille had realigned her shoulder herself by banning it against another tree, when it had been safe to do so.      

The bullet that had caught her on her right hip had been a clean wound. The bullet had entered and exited in one swift motion of searing pain, missing any vital organs or veins, luckily. Sybille unable to stich it up at the time, had bandaged it up, applying pressure to steam the blood loss, now though she was in need of stiches. Luckily for her, Rosa was a well-trained seamstress and it’s not the first time she’s stitched Sybille’s body back together.

“I didn’t want to miss the show.” Sybille offers up as an exclamation. Which was true, but there had also been a chance that the base was no longer safe. After all how the Gestapo had found them in the forest was still unknown. She will deal with that later.

“Dummkopf.” Rosa mutters, but there’s affection in her eyes as she gets to work. Sybille sits stoic as the needle pierces her skin. The twitch of her eye and sharp intake of breath the only indications that there is any pain at all.

“You know you love me.” Sybille teases through gritted teeth and Rosa smiles softly but there is a hidden sadness there. Sybille already knows why. Though both of them have an unspoken agreement not to talk about how close to death Sybille has come tonight the weight of it still lays heavy on their shoulders.

“I can’t believe their gone.” Rosa says instead. Sybille sighs, eyes fluttering closed as flashes’ of Helga, Klaus and Vera’s lifeless bodies hitting the ground play out like a movie behind her eyelids.

“I can.” Sybille replies, tone grave. It’s not the first time Sybille has lost friends and she knows with a heavy heart it won’t be the last. The reality of the world they are living in has never left Sybille, though Rosa too often loses herself in the glamourous smoke and mirrors of the club.

“I just want you to remember that when you’re making all these life and death decisions, you’re thinking for two.” Rosa, whispers as she puts down the needle, her work finished. Blue eyes locking onto Sybille’s brown. The corners of Sybille’s lips twitch upwards in an understanding, affectionate half smile.

“I never forget.” She breathes, leaning forward and pressing her forehead against Rosa’s, cupping her face in her hands and closing the distance between them.

 


End file.
